Voice of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  Rigid with vigilance, he held her until dawn leaked its hazy light through the windows.

  “Shh! They’re coming!”

  Standing with Elora, Alanka watched the Kalindon children play Descendant Invasion for the hundredth time. They slunk across the forest clearing, hunched over, the little ones on the backs of the bigger ones.

  The oldest, a boy of six, directed them behind a clump of honeysuckle. “Everybody be quiet,” he whispered so loudly it might as well have been a shout, “or they’ll get us.”

  At a seemingly random point, some of the children decided to become Descendants themselves, chasing the others and taking them prisoner. Once everyone had been captured, the game began again.

  “When will they get tired of it?” Alanka asked Elora as they dragged another cartload of wood toward the village center.

  “It’s their way of dealing with what happened. I’d rather they act out their fears than keep them inside.”

  “I’d rather forget it all.” They arrived at the growing woodpile and began to unload the cart. The palms of Alanka’s gloves were wearing thin; she’d get a splinter soon if she wasn’t careful. But then at least she would feel something.

  “We’ll never forget.” Elora grunted as she lifted an armload of wood. “We can try to turn our minds away, but our bodies remember.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every day someone comes to me with a fluttery heart or cold sweats or both. Or they can’t sleep at night, waiting for the next attack.” She brushed her hands together. “What about you, Alanka? I haven’t seen you in my office. How are you holding up?”

  Alanka shrugged. “Too busy. No time to fret over things I can’t control. When I go to bed I’m too tired and sore from combat lessons to lie awake worrying.”

  “I told Ladek and Drenis to go easy on the nonwarriors. You’ll get hurt.”

  If only, Alanka thought.

  Elora turned the empty cart around. “At least the rescue party has made it to Leukos, according to the Hawks.”

  Alanka should have been encouraged by the news the latest troupe of Asermons had brought to Kalindos. In her mind, though, Leukos was a gaping maw waiting to swallow Adrek and the other rescuers along with the captives.

  “How’s the hunting?” Elora asked.

  “Don’t know.” She scuffed her moccasins against the dirt as she walked. “I’ve been trapping mostly.” She didn’t want to admit she hadn’t touched a bow in nearly a month. It would prompt questions she couldn’t answer.

  “Elora!”

  They turned to see the Otter’s young apprentice, Pirrik, trotting toward them from the center of the village. He slowed as he neared them.

  “Don’t worry, not an emergency,” he panted. “One of the Asermon Otters wants to go over your inventory to see what to bring back on their next trip. Figured you’d be a better judge of that than I would.”

  Elora cast a wary glance between her apprentice and Alanka. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  Pirrik stayed behind and lifted the cart pole Elora had dropped. “I’ll help you with the wood.”

  Alanka nodded once and said nothing.

  They dragged the cart in silence until they were in sight of the fire ring—or what would be a fire ring once the trees were felled and the ditch dug. Alanka could see Vara the Asermon Snake giving directions to the men chopping trees. Her first-phase Snake magic allowed her to control the spread of fire, making her an expert in such defensive endeavors. Once the fire ring was built, Kalindos could light it to stop intruders. Theoretically, at least.

  “We should have done this years ago.” Alanka indicated the ring. “Lorek could have built it.” The Kalindon Snake had been taken by the Descendants like so many others. “With a fire ring the invasion might not have happened at all.”

  “People were too afraid of another blaze wiping us out.” He glanced at her. “Sorry.”

  She swallowed hard at the memory of the forest fire that had taken her mother’s life over a decade ago. “This reminds me of then, how empty the village was. Did we play the fire game? I don’t remember.”

  “The fire game?”

  “Like these children, reliving the whole thing, over and over.”

  “Oh. I think Thera did. She was only five.”

  “I can’t believe your sister’s sixteen and already a second-phase Hawk.”

  “It’s a big responsibility.” He stopped, bringing the creaky cart wheels to a silent halt. “She’s not angry with you. I know she lashed out when you first found her tied up in the paddock, but she was half-crazed then. None of us are mad at you.”

  Alanka examined the worn spot on her left glove. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “I’m sorry for the way I behaved after I found out.”

  She pulled a splinter out of the glove’s thick leather and waited for Pirrik to continue.

  “You’re not your father,” he said, “and what he did to mine had nothing to do with you.”

  “That’s not exactly true, is it?” She met the Otter’s gaze. “He made a deal with the Descendants to protect Kalindos. To protect me, mostly. Your father got in the way.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s your fault.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  He looked away and scratched the back of his neck, fingers rustling the strands of dark red hair that fell below his nape.

  Was it only the last full moon when she had made love with this man in Deer Meadow, and they had talked about getting married? No, the last full moon the sky had been cloudy. Must have been the month before. The past was turning into one long haze of pain. She wanted to leave it behind.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I hope we can be friends again.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Maybe someday we could even try—”

  “No.” To his startled look she replied, “I mean, yes, we can try to be friends. But nothing more.”

  “Alanka—”

  “You turned away when I needed you most, after my father died.” She gestured to the ditch ahead, where Morran and Endrus dug, shirtless and sweaty. “I thought you were different from all those Cats, not careless. I thought you were kind.”

  She’d rehearsed this speech weeks ago, before the battle, back when losing her mate made her feel as if she’d been stabbed with an icicle. Now it sounded hollow in her throat. She didn’t care anymore. Nothing could touch her now.

  A crack sounded, and the forest disappeared.

  Arrows formed a wall of whistles around her, but they couldn’t hold back the charging Descendants. They came, armor gleaming in the wheat field fire. She shot, again and again, hearing the snap-twang of the bow, the harsh song of an arrow’s flight, the wet thup! of flesh parting at its point.

  And the shrieks. Sometimes Mother or the name of a god or Spirit or no words at all.

  The metallic tang of blood filled her nose and the back of her throat. Then vomit and waste as men died. Wolverines came, slicing flesh and smashing bones. The Descendants smelled like slaughtered animals, right down to the eyeballs. Their scents would drown her.

  “Alanka!”

  That voice didn’t belong on the battlefield. Someone had her arms so she couldn’t shoot. She snarled and raked her fingernails against soft skin. Alanka opened her eyes.

  Pirrik sat before her, holding her wrists. The forest was back. She was kneeling in the dirt but couldn’t remember how she got there.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “About to ask you the same thing.” He released one of her arms and wiped a streak of blood from his cheek where she had scratched him. “The tree’s all the way over there. It won’t fall on you.”

  “Tree?”

  “The one they just chopped down.” He pointed to his left. Ladek the Bear stood with an ax by the stump of a small fallen spruce, watching her.

  Everyone was watching her. She stood slowly.

  “When the trunk cracked,” Pirrik said, �
�you screamed and hit the ground with your arms over your head.”

  “For how long?”

  He shrugged. “Ten seconds, maybe.”

  “It felt like hours.”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Let me take you to see Elora.”

  “No. There’s a better way.”

  She broke away from him and strode toward the fire ring. On the other side of the ditch, Vara the Snake sat on a log nursing an infant. Her sharp gaze shifted to Alanka as she approached.

  “Anyone afraid of trees shouldn’t live in Kalindos.” The wink that followed was the only indication of a joke.

  “Can I ask you a favor?”

  Vara tilted her head. “Sit.”

  Alanka settled herself on the log next to the Snake, then remembered her manners. “He’s a beautiful baby.”

  “I know.” The Snake flipped her long blond braid over her shoulder, away from the infant’s face. “He’ll be a heartbreaker like his father, no doubt.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  Vara chuckled and threw her a glance of appreciation, and Alanka let out the breath holding her tension. Lots of Asermons looked down on Kalindons, but this one seemed friendly enough.

  “You’re second phase now, right?” Alanka said.

  Vara’s answer was an eye roll and a nod to the baby in her arms.

  “Obviously,” Alanka added. “So now you can burn away memories.”

  “Being able and being willing are two different things.” Vara winced. “Ow, his teeth are right under the gums.” After a moment, her grimace faded. “I’ve hardly had any training yet in memory burns. About all I can do is wipe out a person’s whole life, and no one wants that.”

  Alanka felt an urge to shift away—maybe even run away—from the woman beside her. A Snake’s powers were said to be so dangerous, only the strongest minds were chosen by that Spirit. Lorek the Kalindon Snake had frightened her even when they’d played together as children. But she missed him as much as any of the others who were taken.

  “You can’t help me, then.”

  “Not yet. I’m sorry.” Vara’s eyes softened. “What do you want to forget?”

  Alanka sank her chin into her hands. “A simpler question would be, what do I want to remember? It’s all so awful. Look at us.” She motioned to the men working the fire ring. “We’re willing to risk burning down our own village to prevent another invasion. That’s how silly scared we are.”

  “You won’t burn down your village,” Vara said indignantly. “That’s what I’m here to prevent.”

  Alanka barely heard her. “I wonder if this is how people acted before the Reawakening. During the Collapse?”

  Vara scoffed. “There’s no such thing as the Reawakening. Why do you Kalindons cling to that myth?”

  “Because it makes sense. These Descendants are like the people before the Reawakening, believing they can take whatever they want. If that’s what people are like without the Spirits, then that’s what everyone was like back then, before the Spirits chose us.”

  Vara blew out a snort. “If that’s true, then where were the Spirits before the Reawakening? Standing around doing nothing? Being weak?”

  “Maybe they thought we could save ourselves. And when we couldn’t, they had mercy on those who would listen to them. Who would be peaceful and live close to the land and trust the Spirits to provide for them.”

  “Like you Kalindons.”

  “Exactly. We don’t farm or build roads—”

  “Or plan for the future.” Vara nodded toward the village. “Look where all that peace and trust got you.”

  Alanka knew she sounded naive, like her father. A new thought hit her. “But what if there’ll be another Reawakening someday, when things get really bad again?”

  “You think the Spirits will come rescue us from the Descendants?”

  “Or help us rescue ourselves.”

  Vara gazed at the baby in her arms. “It’s a nice dream.” She blinked hard, then turned her attention back to the fire ring. “But I’d rather plan for the worst, just in case.”

  The cloud settled over Alanka again. She thanked Vara and crossed the ditch to collect more wood, pulling on her gloves as she went.

  Perhaps the Asermons were right, and the Spirits had always been strong, and things had always been the same. But everything had changed with the Descendant invasion, and if the future was one long decline into oblivion, she wanted no part of it.

  08

  “Wake up. It’s time to go.”

  Someone shook Filip’s shoulder. He rolled away from the urgent whisper, hoping to slide back into his dreams. It was the only place he could run.

  “Sir, it’s our last chance. Get up.” Kiril gave him a shake that threatened to topple him out of bed.

  Filip sat up and peered into the darkness. “Last chance for what?”

  “To go home before they try to make us become like them.”

  Filip wiped the sleep sweat from his forehead and examined the faint outlines of Kiril’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “I heard Zelia tell her apprentice that Galen is coming tomorrow.”

  “Who?”

  “The Asermon Council leader. But not just that, he discerns people’s so-called gifts, like you with the animals and me with the lights.”

  Filip seized the lieutenant’s arm. “I said never to speak of that.”

  “I haven’t. But the other soldiers are having the same problem. Someone must have noticed.”

  “Have you seen them do magic?”

  “No, but I know that look—the shifty eyes, the nervousness around each other, taking care never to reveal anything. You haven’t noticed how quiet they’ve grown this last month?”

  “I don’t mingle much,” Filip said.

  “You’ll have to mingle now. We’re going.”

  “What about the archers?”

  “Those weaklings won’t kill unarmed men. Besides, even death is better than living here.” He jerked Filip’s blanket. “You hate it, too, so come with us.”

  Filip looked up at him, for a moment imagining the possibility. Home. Family. Hearing a dog bark and only hearing a dog bark.

  “You know I can’t,” he said.

  Kiril let out a gust of air, as if he wanted to argue. He looked at the door, then back at Filip. “I couldn’t leave without asking.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  Kiril stood up straight, snapped his heels together and saluted, fist to heart. Filip returned the gesture for the last time, then held out his hand. Kiril grasped it, and they stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Good luck,” Filip said finally. “If you see my parents, tell them—” He let go of Kiril’s hand. “Tell them I died.”

  “I will, sir,” he whispered.

  When Filip heard the soft footsteps of the seven men pad through the front room, his own feet—the one that existed and the one that didn’t—longed to follow. It was his feet that made him grab his shirt and yank it over his head, then seize his crutches. The feet that craved the smooth stone streets of Leukos.

  As Filip lurched for the door, he heard a muffled but commanding voice yell, “Halt!” He kept moving. When he swung the door open, it banged against his right crutch, and he faltered for a moment.

  He reached the porch and realized what that moment had granted him.

  An eternity of exile.

  His comrades’ bodies lay sprawled on the grass in front of the hospital. Two writhed in agony, blood and foam spurting from their mouths. The rest lay unmoving. Arrows protruded from every back.

  The crutches fell from his grip, and he clutched the porch railing with both hands.

  A woman leaped to the ground in front of him, as if from the sky.

  “Move no farther.” She leveled an arrow at his chest, her bow creaking with tension. “Or you’ll meet the same fate.”

  He looked up, past the arrow, into the pale green eyes of a hooded Asermon. Four others dropped around
him, as lightly as cats, and he realized they’d been on the rooftop and in the limbs of a nearby tree. Two more raced down the street, bows in hand.

  “Get inside,” the woman said to Filip.

  He reached for his crutches.

  “Leave them,” ordered one of the men. “We want you empty-handed.”

  “I can’t walk without them.”

  “Then crawl.”

  Dazed with shock and fear, Filip obeyed, turning to place his palms on the porch. Then he heard a third guard snicker, and he stopped.

  “No,” Filip said, on his hands and knees. “Either let me walk or shoot me. Shoot me in the back, the way you did my comrades, like the cowardly beasts you are.”

  The woman gave a guttural oath and kicked him between the legs. Filip collapsed, his chin slamming into the wooden porch. The pain from the kick shot to his core, turning his vision black, then sparkling red, then black again.

  Somewhere, beyond the haze of his agony, a familiar voice said, “What have you done?”

  He wanted to tell Zelia he hadn’t done anything, and ask why everything always had to be his fault. But he couldn’t breathe, much less speak.

  “They tried to escape,” the first male said. “One got away.”

  “Who gave you authority to shoot them?”

  “The Council. They said to take them alive if possible, but under no circumstances let them return home with what they know about us.”

  “We’ll track down the last one.” The female guard toed the sole of Filip’s foot, sending an aftershock of pain up his body. “And this one isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Don’t touch him.” Zelia knelt and lay a cool hand on Filip’s forehead. His throat emitted a low whine with each breath.

  “Hold still,” Zelia told him. She placed her fingertips below his navel and began a deep, soothing chant. Filip’s pain dulled enough for him to open his eyes.

  “Who?” he managed to whisper. “Who escaped?”

  “I’ll see.” Zelia’s feet swished through the grass as she examined the bodies, all of which were silent now. “Kiril’s the only one missing.”